JEFFREY DONALDSON
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long phrasing across the formalities of the verse, as if the pain would drag
itself free from the constraint." To quote again from "Poetry as Menace
and Atonement":
That commonplace image, founded upon the unfinished statues of
Michelangelo, "mighty figures straining to free themselves from the
imprisoning marble," has never struck me as being an ideal image for
sculpture itself; it seems more to embody the nature and condition of
those arts which are composed of words.
Language, in its semantic density, is forever trying to free itself from
its own "quotidian shapelessness and imperfection." Might this not be
something of what Hill has in mind when he speaks of 'standing by'
what one writes, the language in effect keeping vigil by weighing against
its own surfaces, in an effort to become "beside itself?" Although Hill is
certain that, "however much a poem is shaped and finished, it remains to
some extent within the 'imprisoning marble' of a quotidian shapelessness
and imperfection," he still takes no "cynical view of those rare moments
in which the inertia of language, which is also the coercive force of
language, seems to have been overcome." If we highlight one cognate of
"resurrection," "to surge" (through "surgcre"), we may begin to sense
how "The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Pcguy" frames both the
effort of dense language to struggle free of its "prose" self and the labor
of resurrection, of which Pcguy's falling flat on his face among the
beetroots becomes an exemplary model.
We shou ld remember that Hill is, as ever, equally sensitive
to
the
metaphorical status of this notion of the specific gravity of language. It is
one way of describing certain achievable effects in poetry; there are cer–
tainly others. Still, Hill believes that the force of the linguistic impression
in verse is substantial. Donald Davie writes that "the whole play of literal
meaning, in fact, is a Swedish drill, in which nothing is being lifted,
transported, or set down, though the muscles tense, knot, and relax as if
it were." It is in that "tension" of thought, that we find, as Hill writes,
"the unmoral nature sudden ly trapped in the inexorable toils of moral–
ity." Such metaphors of language's gravity seek, however inadequately,
to isolate and define this frangible yet palpable phenomenon.
Yet if Pcguy's own unique manner of 'standing by' what he wrote
is countenanced by Hill's mirroring homage, Hill claims no such sanction
or privilege for his own vigil. What is characteristic of this reserve is his
refusal to call attention to his own expiatory efforts (save where they are
shown to be susp icious or inadequate), his refusal, that is, to draw ex–
plicit attention to any possible correspondence between Pcguy's fall and
the cadences of his own language. In this sense, the poem remains silent,
